Are we as rational as we believe?

Yesterday, I reviewed “Don’t think of an Elephant,” by George Lakoff. Lakoff argues that U.S. conservatives have had such success in the past in gaining public support for their agenda because they have used language and framing to appeal to peoples’ emotions.

I found that this understanding of voters as being driven by their emotions and not simply rational thought to be a compelling argument, and one worthy of exploring further.

I always assumed that people determined their support for a political candidate based on their policies and not their emotional appeal. However, as Lakoff demonstrates, this is often not the case.

Which makes me wonder: if people are not necessarily rational voters, how rational are they in other areas of their lives?

The idea that each person is a “rational actor,” each pursuing her own self-interest through making rational choices, is also at the core of modern economic thought.

I remember encountering this idea in the first economics course I ever took at university. Opening my macroeconomics textbook for the first time, I learned within the first paragraph that “human wants are unlimited or insatiable” and therefore resources are scarce and must be competed for.

This concept never settled well with me. Is it really rational to have wants that are unlimited? And are these unlimited wants purely a product of our reason, or our emotions as well?

Now, I’m not an economist. But considering that our society’s overconsumption has led to global warming and widespread environmental destruction, it does not seem logical that we as individuals should continue to try to fulfill our unlimited wants. It is unsustainable, both for the environment and for humanity.

In examining the nature of individuals, I would also argue that emotions, and not necessarily reason, play a significant role in peoples’ personal desires.

A good example of this is commercial advertising. Successful advertising often equates products with emotional experiences in order to influence peoples’ purchases. And material goods are often purchased for the social status that they convey to others, and so are often consumed in order to fulfill an emotional desire for status or social acceptance.

Household debt in Canada is higher now that it has been in decades. Have high debt loans been a rational choice that households have made, or are they a reflection of a society which values and encourages emotional fulfillment through material consumption?

This understanding of humans as being individual, rational actors denies the possibility that personal fulfillment is attainable and that one can be satisfied with what they have.

It also completely ignores the social nature of human beings. Our existence as individuals is deeply intertwined with our families and wider communities, and the relationships within these shape us significantly.

That is why I find the public justice framework so refreshing when contrasted with the “rational actor” understanding of how individuals behave.

Public justice views individuals within the context of broader society and incorporates within it the needs of individuals for relationship and community. In doing so, it invites a more complex, holistic understanding of ourselves and our society, and the values by which we can foster justice and care for one another.